you know, there's a lot i can take out here...in africa. where i've lived my entire life. droughts floods death shortages no power wars street kids witchcraft man eating lions malaria imbalances between the rich and the poor. the whole scabby lot. but one thing that scares me, that can scare the hell out of me if i allow it to , is the dark. the night. robbers who come stealthily, hiding in the shadows, walking by the light of the moon. pangas gleaming silver and silent. pistols held carelessly by desperate stoned bandits. shiftas. jambazis. robbers. murderers. and the dogs barking into the wind. into the night.
i lie and talk quietly to my mind at night - making it see the sweetness of the full moon framed in my loft window....to distract it from the silent footfalls through the acacias outside, under a deadly moon. to distract it from plans. ok . will run and get the kids, run back up. switch on alarm. distract it from images of blood on walls and the taste of fear, like metal, in the back of my throat.
i read dostoevsky until two in the morning. or deepak choppra's Grow Younger Live Longer bollox. what a load of poppycock. perfect to fall asleep to. to deaden the mind.
a borrel of cab sav does the trick too - i become really brave and have images of me with our inherited rigby shotgun, standing like joan of arc upstairs in my room, my children safely behind me, victoriously blowing away mother fucker robbers as they arrive in their jambazi (baddies in swahili) hordes into the office below.
these images are short lived.
the fear of the dark is something that has always been with me since a child. growing up in 1970's zambia - where things were rather wild, wooley and hooliganic. what with the war for the liberation of zimbabwe going on, and a large zanu pf freedom fighter camp at the bottom of the garden...... cairo road was filled with hectic jimmi hendrix wannabes - afros, platformed shoes, bell bottoms, booga mina booga wena sunglasses (funagalore -a language from the mines - for see me see you glasses - aviators with the reflective lenses - or elton john styled ones), and lots of illegal ivory being sold on the streets - carved into trinkets, necklaces and bangles.( i still have a few. i tell anyone who asks, that its false. unless i am in the mood to be otherwise.) and lots of AK 47's and bank robberies and dead whiteys and their dead dogs and their stolen cars. security was definitely an issue.
i remember my father walking out into very thick starry nights, night jars twittering amongst the brachystegia, standing under the mulberry trees and shooting his elephant guns " to scare the robbers". i overhear my mother saying "ron. someones been watching the house all week. sitting in the tree on the corner." and such things. i remember coming home from a friends house, who convinced my mother to stay the night, not to go home alone with the kid (my sisters were at boarding school) because "you know how things are now dorothy..." walking into my bedroom the next morning, the windows smashed into my bed with a brick. glittering menacingly in the white nine o clock morning light falling through the empty window. all of my mothers clothes are stolen. all of her shoes. everything. mega mega robbery but " thank god we're ok. thank god we weren't at home," i hear her on the phone.
into lusaka we race, in her datsun sports car, sucking peppermints - to margos, the only boutique in town. small and fashionable. my mother spends all the money. well nearly all of it and is so pleased with her purchases. to replace all the stolen clothes. we stop at the hardware for putty and glass to fix the windows and when we get back to the car, the windows are smashed in and all her new clothes and shoes are gone. gone. i remember her crying under the hot eleven o clock zambian sun. head down. and i looked down and saw her white sandals all orange from the orange earth, and her toes dirty and orange and simple. surrounded by broken glass. little bluey green nuggets twinkling in the orange dirt. and me feeling so bad. so sad and so scared. of the dark.
this week, the wild mountain wind blew in "baayad thangs" down in the valley below. my friend. alone with her kids. hears the dogs barking. it's nearly full moon and only eleven o clock. she gets up. throws on a shirt and thinks "damnit, where's the askari? why doesn't he shut the dogs up?"
suddenly someone is standing outside on the verandah, with a torch saying "open the door mama. it is your askari." she quickly notices the man is too tall. too nervous and suddenly realizes, in the pit of her stomache, what is happening.
she runs down the passage. barefoot and fleet. to hide her kids. she presses the alarm and throws on a kikoi (east african wrap) and lies on the bed. she hears the door getting smashed open. bent grotesquely with a tyre wrench- glass splintered, shattered everywhere. she hears the siren scream and sees the torchlight flashing down the passage towards her and her children. she hears her heart in her ears. main lining adrenalin.
MOTHER FUCKER! MALAYA (whore in swahili)! three men explode into her room, in the dark, shouting, screaming, high on adrenalin and ganja, armed with pangas, stinking of fear in the room.
she jumps up, "samahani samahani tafadali...iko watoto..." please please there are children. please." trying to be calm.
so they make her switch off the alarm. the neighbours call to see if it was a false alarm. she can;t answer the phone because there are three men, with pangas, in her bedroom. they rob her. they shout at her. they do not rape her. they do not harm her children. thank god. thank god.
so fucking scary. so terrifying. so bloody unacceptable. but we decide it must not affect us in a bad way. oh no. oh no. because this is home. we play rummikub in the bedroom over a glass of chilled white wine, to clean the space, to make it what it was before.
not funny this time. oh no. everyone on the ngorobobs are off to a security meeting this evening. i have another askari. and we sleep with one ear awake and the iron gates locked. and we are not afraid. no. oh no. i refuse to be afraid. fear is the most destructive emotion on the entire planet.
when i started boarding school, in "rhodesia" as it was then known, i listened to all my friends (and lots of the grownups too) talking of gooks and terrs and realized (slowly i shall have to confess!?) that these were the same people camped out below our garden back at home. once, at lunch at the Presidents house (yes, indeed, The President of Rhodesia's House - the Honorable President Clifford du Pont - who committed suicide i think - and happened to be my best friend's uncle hence the situation of a small 6 year old zambian (enemy territory) sitting at the presidents sumptious sunday lunches) i remember being in awe. silent awe. little. and knowing, with great seriousness, that i shouln't let the side down, let the H P C du Pont know that I am zambian...that's enemy territory. for sure. so there i sat, in my sunday pinafore, chasing green, sweet fresh minted peas around my porcelain presidential plate, and buttering my melba toast and wondering, with great frustration, why presidents insisted on such crunchy breaky toast at sunday lunches?
and then he said, The Honorable President Clifford Du Pont, " And So Janelle. Where Are You From?" in deep deep royal rhodesian colonial bastard english.
righto. ruse over. i am sunk. stow away has been discovered. jail and torture ahead.
i swallowed hard, thought of the huge freedom fighter camp below our garden, knowing they were the enemy, knowing that there were lots of them, and squeaked " from zambia," staring hard at my shattered melba toast.
i thought there was a slight pause, as he raised his eyebrows and said " armenell tells me you are a keen horserider? your favourite horse being Bombay? well then. i think it's time we went and explored the stable yard, don't you? check up on the race horses...."
and off we strolled over manicured lawns, past clipped hedges and immaculate rose gardens with running streams and little bridges, down to the oak lined stable yard. all those sepia coloured sundays years ago...
and that was that. i was free to go. the rhodesians eventually bombed the camp, towards the end of the war, a few years later, in an operation called Operation Zambezi. fortunately we had just moved from the house but apparently the garden was filled with shells and every window was broken. shattered.
cheeky buggers, the rhodesians. they flew in below the radar, ordered the lusaka control tower to ground all planes. " no problem bwana" responded the tower. afterwhich they roared over lusaka, raining down their bombs intended for joshua nkoma.
and those freedom fighters below our garden....
Kitchen Board: Tuesday 19 August 2008.
Contributors: Veronica & Janelle
Comments: pass. what can i say? another hideous shopping list. and proudly completed today. hooah. toodely pip and all that. xxx janelle
(pic by tim walker - very inspirational photographer)
Contributors: Veronica, Janelle, Rubin, Daniel and Gabriella.
leaned up against tap making frantic phone call to marc next door to come and save us while i shout at children. and it's his last night before he too disappears ON BLOODY SAFARI. i swear. tommorrow there shall be stalwart brass taps installed no matter the cost. fuck it. 
